The specifications and regulations of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate that communication service providers comply with very strict bandwidth constraints, including the requirement that the amount of energy spillover outside a licensed channel or band of interest, be sharply attenuated (e.g., on the order of 50 dB). Although such limitations may be readily overcome for traditional forms of modulation, such as FM, they are difficult to achieve using more contemporary, digitally based modulation formats, such as M-ary modulation.
Attenuating sidebands sufficiently to meet industry or regulatory-based standards using such modulation techniques requires very linear signal processing systems and components. Although relatively linear components can be obtained at a reasonable cost for relatively low bandwidth (baseband) telephone networks, linearizing components such as RF power amplifiers can be prohibitively expensive.
A fundamental difficulty in linearizing an RF power amplifier is the fact that it is an inherently non-linear device, and generates unwanted intermodulation distortion products (IMDs). IMDs manifest themselves as spurious signals in the amplified RF output signal, separate and distinct from the RF input signal. A further manifestation of IMD is spectral regrowth or spreading of a compact spectrum into spectral regions that were not occupied by the RF input signal. This distortion causes the phase-amplitude of the amplified output signal to depart from the phase-amplitude of the input signal, and may be considered as an incidental (and undesired) amplifier-sourced modulation of the RF input signal.
A straightforward way to implement a linear RF power amplifier is to build it as a large, high power device, but operate the amplifier at only a low power level (namely, at a small percentage of its rated output power), where the RF amplifier's transfer function is relatively linear. An obvious drawback to this approach is the overkill penalty--a costly and large sized RF device. Other prior art techniques which overcome this penalty include feedback correction techniques, feedforward correction, and predistortion correction. Feedforward and predistortion correction, however, are not limited in this regard.
Feedback correction techniques include polar envelope correction (such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,742,201), and Cartesian feedback, where the distortion component at the output of the RF amplifier is used to directly modulate the input signal to the amplifier in real time. Feedback techniques possess the advantage of self-convergence, as do negative feedback techniques in other fields of design. However, systems which employ negative feedback remain stable over a limited bandwidth, which prevents their application in wide-bandwidth environments, such as multi-carrier or W-CDMA.
In the feedforward approach, error (distortion) present in the RF amplifier's output signal is extracted, amplified to the proper level, and then reinjected with equal amplitude but opposite phase into the output path of the amplifier, so that (ideally) the RF amplifier's distortion is effectively canceled.
With predistortion correction, a signal is modulated onto the RF input signal path upstream of the RF amplifier. The ideal predistortion signal has a characteristic that is the inverse or complement of the distortion expected at the output of the high power RF amplifier, so that when subjected to the distorting transfer function of the RF amplifier, it effectively cancels the distortion behavior.
Either predistortion or feedforward may be made adaptive by extracting an error signal component in the output of the RF amplifier and then adjusting the control signal(s), in accordance with the extracted error behavior of the RF amplifier, so as to effectively continuously minimize distortion in the amplifier's output.
One conventional mechanism for extracting the error signal component is to inject a pilot (tone) signal into the signal flow path through the amplifier and measure the amplifier's response. A fundamental drawback to the use of a pilot tone is the need for dedicated pilot generation circuitry and the difficulty of placing the pilot tone within the signal bandwidth of the amplifier. In addition, pilot tone injection causes the generation of an unwanted spur; also, a piloted system is open-loop in the sense that the controller operates on the pilot and not the IMDs. Hence, the system only assumes that IMDs are being properly cancelled.
Other approaches include the use of a high intercept receiver to detect low level distortion in the presence of high power carriers, which adds substantial complexity and cost, or the use of a wideband correlator. The latter mechanism suffers from the fact that it relies on measurement of wideband energy, rather than on the spectral distortion components.